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User blog:Dionsama/Most "Dangerous" Cards
Hello, this is my second blog post, and I will be using this one to discuss the TCG instead of the anime. As I mentioned in my profile, I have experience with quite a few TCGs. A fact that I quickly realized while playing Battle Spirits, even casually, was that there was a large amount of "killer cards", usually Spirits or Braves. By "killer cards" I'm referring to, essentially, cards that, when utilized properly, are capable of taking disproportionately massive steps towards victory compared to their cost / restrictions / difficulty of use. Of course everyone's aware of the expression "if everyone's special, noone is" and this applies to some extent here. With such a wide variety of powerful cards available, very, very many decks have access to the toys they need to have a fair shot at victory. So while a lot of cards have a lot of 'weight' when it comes to winning, a relatively low number is actually ''overpowered in the context of the metagame, and those that are quite likely to be hit by restrictions. In this post, I'm going to talk about two specific cards that are, in my view, flat-out overpowered, and have not yet been included in the banlist. Now I'm a relatively new player but I've been diligent in studying and testing the game as competitively as possible with many different decks, so I have some clue what I'm talking about. Still, the point is to discuss and everyone should feel free to argue against the opinions presented here and state their own experiences. So, with that cleared up, I will touch the first of the two aforementioned cards, and one of the top cards I expect to be hit soon, because of how quickly it can turn a losing game into a disastrous situation for the opponent: The FantasyHeavenBlade Twilight-Fantasia Everyone who watched the Sword Eyes anime should be familiar with this. The Dark Yellow Sword Brave, used by Amarello Berge. Its Brave requirement is a cost 5 or higher spirit, which is very low. Its standalone BP is 5000, and likewise its Braved BP is +5000. It has one yellow symbol. Its cost is 5, with 2 yellow reduction. This might seem a little expensive at first compared to many widely-utilized Braves which have either 4 cost / 3 reduction or 5 cost / 4 reduction, but it is well-worth the investment, especially given that there are many cards that can summon it for free. What makes Twilight-Fantasia really dangerous is its effect. Its first effect is not particularly astounding - when summoned, it adds a Core from Reserve to Life if your Life is lower than 6, which sounds nice but, as you will soon see, Twilight-Fantasia is usually a game winner so the extra Life is usually nothing more than some insurance. It is its second effect that turns it into one of the deadliest Braves in the game: When the spirit Braved with this card attacks, if it is blocked, it refreshes. It doesn't need to win or even engage in battle first (which makes it impossible to stop it by dodging battle in some way). It just refreshes on the spot, allowing a second attack as soon as the first one is over. Now that might not sound so impressive, because you can just take the hit from Life - you can, after all, play cautiously and afford to take even a double-symbol hit. Aside from the fact that this will allow you to further restore your Lives (even going past 6), it should stop the attack right there. And then, of course, there's the option of blocking with a spirit that is powerful enough to destroy the Brave spirit. So it might not become obvious why I'm hyping the card so much... until you realize that Twilight-Fantasia's true strength lies outside its own color. One very obvious combo is to Brave Twilight Fantasia onto a spirit that can target attack. Red is the usual suspect in this, with multiple spirits that can launch a target attack on any opposing spirit, such as The ShineCentaurusDeity Sagitto-Apollodragon. Because, when you target attack a spirit, it is still treated as blocking, the Brave spirit will instantly refresh itself and, given that red has typically much higher BP scores than the rather lackluster yellow, likely wipe out its target and move on to the next. Basically the only way to stop it from completely clearing your field and making another swipe at your life is to use magic, such as green magic that exhausts it (Binding Thorn etc) or white magic that ends the battle phase (Burst Wall etc). However, defensive magic isn't widely used due to its reactive nature. The only defensive magic card that sees widespread use is the previously mentioned Burst Wall, and because that will typically be set as Burst, it can't be used to defend against this combo until it has finished destroying your spirits. It's worth noting that red typically supports Braves in general and has powerful on-attack skills, making Twilight-Fantasia very easy and profitable to use. Red isn't the only color that can combo well with Twilight-Fantasia. White can also make excellent use of it, because its ability to manually refresh spirits means that even if your opponent takes the initial hit from Life, you can refresh the Brave spirit yourself and launch another attack, until your opponent ends up being forced to block or lose anyway. That works around green decks that can force-exhaust opposing spirits in the flash step, but can fall prey to Bursts, for example the very popular The DragonHero Sieg-Yamato-Fried. Even if your Brave spirit has enough BP to avoid destruction, Yamato should still be able to overcome its BP and block it. Though white is a very strong color in itself and offers a potent combo, I recommend red more for this Brave (especially since white has its own killer strategy, outlined below). Of course, there is always the option of using it in its home stretch. Amarello's deck for Twilight-Fantasia is a yellow deck based on Holy Life, with some Rush options. Personally I don't think it's an ideal deck to use TF for, even in the yellow color, because it doesn't feature particularly high BP scores which Twilight-Fantasia wants. On the other side, The ArcAngelia Avrielle is a powerful ace spirit to use in a deck that utilizes this Brave, but is instead based on yellow Charge. Not only can Avrielle summon Twilight-Fantasia and any other Brave at a feeble cost of 1, but the BP reduction can ensure the Brave spirit can overcome any potentially annoying blockers. I believe one of the big advantages Twilight-Fantasia has is its versatility. It has such a great power : cost ratio that it can and should be splashed in practically any deck that calls for it. My otherwise exclusively red deck for it is a very lethal combination of hard field control and card advantage that can actually search out Twilight-Fantasia in order to speed up its winning pattern. Its very difficult to counter, especially if you don't see it coming, and hits hard enough to decide the game in a single turn. With my points regarding Twilight-Fantasia sufficiently illustrated, I will move on to the second card featured in this post. This one is a spirit, and compared to Twilight-Fantasia, it needs a bit more work and deck dedication to pull off its winning pattern, and its combo needs a few more cards. However, when you pull it off, it is even more unstoppable than Twilight-Fantasia. The BlackHeavenFox Nega-Ninetail This is another card that the anime viewers will be familiar with. Used by Yaiba as his mid-season key spirit, it is a single-symbol white spirit with a steep cost of 7, given that it has only 3 white reduction. It has an underwhelming 6000 BP at Level 1, for which 1 Core is required, and 8000 BP at Level 2, for which 3 Cores are required. Only at Level 3, with 4 Cores, does it rise to a bit more respectable 12000 BP, which is still quite low compared to today's standards. However, like before, its the effect that makes this spirit, and with Nega-Ninetail's effect, BP becomes almost a non-issue... First, Nega-Ninetail possesses an in-built method to summon it for free. Fitting with its color, it is a reactive, and very unusual method. When your white spirit of cost 6 or more is destroyed, you can summon it from the hand without paying the cost. This adds a defensive layer to the usage of this spirit - if your opponent thinks that, just because he destroyed your wall spirit, he can get a free shot at victory, he can kiss his chances goodbye as you summon this thing out of basically nowhere. Because white has several great blockers, you can easily stall the game until you draw this, and the remaining components you need to settle the match. Worth noting is The MoonlightDragon Strike-Siegwurm, whose cost meets this card's requirement, and which can rise to respectable BP and serve as a wall against all spirits with lower BP as well as against green force-exhaust, making red, with its destruction and high power, its only natural enemy. I've won many recent games thanks to Strike, because many even high-level players just aren't prepared to deal with its virtually infinite blocking capacity. The usefulness of Nega-Ninetail's first effect doesn't stop there, though. It can also be used to continue a push that was stopped by a superior spirit or BP boost effect or unexpected destruction and it can, a bit more unusually, create a net gain if you were to destroy your own spirit as some cost. Due to the aforementioned factors, this spirit's high cost becomes way less important, and is only a detrimental factor if you draw a lot of high cost spirits too early. Now that we've seen how versatile its first skill is, let's move on to its second and final skill. Said skill can be thought of as three different skills, the main skill and its two Rushes. Its main skill, upon attacking or blocking, Nega-Ninetail can return any number of opposing spirits to the owner's hand as long as their total BP is less than its own. This can further increase its offensive or defensive capabilities, but it's less valuable than it sounds. It doesn't hold up offensively because of its Rush, which is Nega-Ninetail's main use and will be mentioned immediately afterward - you generally ''shouldn't be attacking at all, until said Rush is enabled, and then the main skill becomes nearly uselss. And it also doesn't hold up defensively because, outside the event of your spirit being destroyed at the first Flash Timing and you being able to surprise-block with it, your opponent will be able to anticipate it and attack only with stronger spirits, which means that you blocking will result in losing Nega-Ninetail, which you'' do not want to happen''. Still, the presence of this skill acts as a nice insurance - even if you don't get your main combo running due to bad luck, it is that something extra that can often mean the difference between victory and defeat. And finally, we have the main dish... the thing that can turn Nega-Ninetail, from a decent spirit with a smooth summoning condition, to an unstoppable killing machine: Rush. Nega-Ninetail has 2 separate Rushes: a green and a yellow Rush. Now green is a decent choice as it has very nice options with white. Yellow... not so much. To use Nega-Ninetail to its full potential, though, you need both, and luckily, both are very easily achievable through a means that doesn't require you to run a single green or yellow card in your deck... despite its Rush, Nega-Ninetail can and is meant to perform at peak efficiency in a pure white deck. The means I'm talking about is the well-known Dark White Sword Brave, The MidnightSunTreasuredSword Midnight-Sun. Brave this card to any spirit, and you'll be able to use any of its Rush effects without fulfilling the requirement. That used to be more tame when it was just Midnight-Sun, because getting both the spirit and the Brave in your hand was tricky, but with the appearance of The MidnightSunLightSword Midnight-Solar, which performs the same function as well as acting as a refresh engine for your secondary attackers or defenders (which you shouldn't have to won't use), the amount of enabler Braves has doubled, skyrocketing the deck's consistency. Midnight-Sun is typically preferred for marginally higher power as well as Invincibility to 4 colors which is very useful, and it can block some really annoying effects, but Midnight-Solar works just fine for its intended purpose. The critical question is, what can Ninetail-Dark do with this? And the answer is: its attack can bypass any blockers completely, and also prevent the activation of any Bursts in response to the opponent taking a Life from it (also worth noting that the Burst sealing works even defensively, so if your opponent attacks you can safely block with the Brave spirit knowing he won't be able to use an on-destruction Burst). What this means for the game is that when Ninetail-Dark attacks, your opponent will practically have to take a double symbol attack and not be able to retaliate. The only way would be to use defensive magic which, like I mentioned above, is not widespread. Bursts like Burst Wall orThe DragonHero Sieg-Yamato-Fried simply won't work. To add the final icing, what does white excel at? That's right. Refreshing spirits. Using one of the many, many spells that refresh spirits, from the good old White Potion to Reboot Code to Regain, you don't have to wait - you can launch 2 or even 3 attacks with your unstoppable Brave spirit in the same turn. Generally I'd just try to get in an early hit to take my opponent down to 4, then play full defense until I get the following three cards: Ninetail-Dark, Midnight-Sun/-Solar, 1 refreshing card. Then I can OTK without worrying about retaliation, giving my opponent a very small window of opportunity to survive. The deck is based around defense and control, making up for the fact that more cards are required to finish the combo. Nega-Ninetail does not have the sheer impact Twilight-Fantasia has, with its high splashability and overwhelming field dominance. If Twilight-Fantasia is a nuke, then Nega-Ninetail is a lethal precision missile that can shoot, surely and accurately, past any enemy defenses and aim straight for the killing blow. This concludes my review. In a future blog I might put up my decklists for these two cards in order to better illustrate their use. Feel free to share your thoughts. Category:Blog posts